


Oblivmyre

by TheDarkChocolateLord



Category: Keeper of the Lost Cities Series - Shannon Messenger
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I guess the ending could be called happy if you squint?, Injury, The Pyren Brothers AU, neither of them are okay, the rest of the council is there for like one scene - Freeform, we stan our disaster councillor bff duo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28005816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkChocolateLord/pseuds/TheDarkChocolateLord
Summary: A fire (denial), a burn (depression), a hoodie (bargaining), a meeting (anger), a letter (acceptance).Five scenes that follow Oralie as she processes Kenric's death.
Relationships: Councillor Bronte & Councillor Oralie (Keeper of the Lost Cities)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	Oblivmyre

Most Empaths know that 'five stages of grief' is wrapped in myth and misinformation.

There aren't steps to follow when dealing with loss, there aren't ways to know that everything's going to turn out fine. It's terrifying and chaotic and there are more responses as there are stars in the sky, none of them "right" or "wrong".

Yet there are five emotions that are closely associated with grief and recovery. Five emotions that are felt by different people, in different ways, at different times.

There are five emotions that are closely associated with grief, and Oralie has felt them all. 

_ Denial. _

_ Ora, I'm sorry. I love you. _

The transmission entered her mind right as Sophie teleported the three of them into the void. She hacked and coughed, too busy trying to clear the smoke from her lungs and wondering what Kenric meant to answer Sophie's question about where they should go next.

_ I'm sorry. I love you. _

It wasn't unlike Kenric to transmit to her. Far from it, in fact. An 'it'll work out' during a tough negotiation, a terrible pun when she was stressed, but this was different. He'd never said  _ I love you  _ before—she didn't know how to handle that information. And his transmission seemed….

_ Final. _

Sophie grabbed her hand on one side, Fitz's on the other, and split a crack in the void; the three of them touched down on a grassy expanse far from the flames. In the distance, the ruins of the tower looked like a half-burnt purple candle that was dripping with wax.

"Dad!" Fitz shouted.

"Kenric!" Oralie called, the word scraping her scorched lungs as she scanned the open field. "Terik! Bronte!"

No reply.

"I found them!" Fitz yelled, gesturing to a group of cloaked figures near the fence, and Oralie raced towards the distant group, ignoring that it felt like she was inhaling sand and that her left shoulder was still roaring with pain from where the molten amethyst had hit the fireproof fabric. They had to be okay. They had to be okay.

She reached the group of cloaked figures. Only four of them, she realized, now that she was closer. Alden had rushed to embrace Sophie and Fitz, Tiergan was discussing something with Liora—a moment later, he light leaped away—leaving Oralie with Terik.

"Where is everyone?"

"Collecting the ingredients for the frissyn," Terik explained. He handed her an Imparter. "Can you hail Kesler Dizznee? I'll contact Lady Galvin—she's the last one on the list. We're going to need all the alchemists we can get to put out this mess."

"Wait." Oralie reached out for Terik's hand. "You haven't told me whether everyone's safe or not."

Terik hesitated, his stress and fear hitting Oralie in jagged waves, followed by a cloud of guilt. "Hail Kesler first, okay?"

Oralie knew that he  _ had  _ to be hiding something, but she also knew that she couldn't afford to waste time, not when the fire could reach the silver fence any minute, so she turned to the screen of her Imparter and made the fastest call of her life. 

"Done. Is everyone safe?" She thought about Kenric's transmission to her— _ I'm sorry, I love you _ —no. He had to be okay. Terik was just being paranoid, or someone was hurt, or—

"Kenric," Terik admitted. "He didn't make it out. Neither did Fintan."

_ No. _

_ He can't be gone. _

_ He can't be gone. _

Kenric reassuring her last night that this was going to be okay, Kenric making everyone smile right before the healing, Kenric—

_ He's not dead, he just hasn't made it out yet! _

"He can't be dead," Oralie managed. "He can't be dead!" 

"He is," Terik confirmed. "I saw it happen...I'm so sorry."

She clung to his hand, hoping against hope that it wasn't true, but his sincerity sank into her fingertips, followed by a devastating blur of sorrow.

Kenric was gone.

_ Depression. _

Oralie wasn't surprised when Bronte showed up at her doorstep the next morning, claiming that he was there to help her treat the burn on her shoulder. Somehow she knew that it was more than that, that he wanted to make sure she was okay in more ways then one.

Unlike usual, he didn't even tease her about how pink her sitting room was. And unlike usual, she didn't crack a joke about his height when he asked her to sit down so he could reach her shoulder, just collapsed onto her couch and handed him the medical supplies.

His hands were surprisingly gentle as he took off the bandage, reapplied a layer of the burn salve, and wrapped a new bandage on. With his hands touching her shoulder, it wasn't hard for her to reach out and sense his emotions. Depression, tension, exhaustion…

"Did you sleep at  _ all  _ last night?"

"Not really," Bronte sighed. "I was also up early this morning, to…"

"To what?" 

"To do a planting for Fintan." Conflict—a tangle of trepidation and unease and a tiny bit of satisfaction and  _ grief _ —clouded Bronte's expression, overwhelming Oralie's initial shock. She shifted her ability off, trying to separate her emotions from Bronte's as she asked, "Why?" 

"You don't have to like or even understand my reasoning," Bronte warned. "It's just….I spent thousands of years living with my brother. Living  _ for  _ him, really. I felt like there should be something to commemorate that, even though I hate what he became."

"Oh."

"I don't miss the murderer who killed Kenric….but I miss my brother _.  _ I miss the little kid who was always full of energy. I miss the teenager who reassured me that he loved me and that things were going to work out for us, even when I thought that the world was scared of my ability and hated me. I miss the elf who taught me about public speaking and projection when I was stumbling over my speeches. I miss all the people Fintan used to be."

His words opened a secret door in Oralie's mind and unleashed a flood of memories, memories she had tried to bury when she had learned that Fintan was with a rebel group that had tortured Sophie. 

Fintan, staying up late to write a speech for the next assembly, page thick with conviction and trust and hope, words flaring off the page and coming alive.

Fintan, consoling Bronte when he was feeling down, one of the few people who could make Bronte's grumpy demeanor crumble in a matter of seconds.

Fintan, laughing with Kenric about a joke. Laughing and laughing until it seemed like his face would crumple.

Fintan. 

"I miss that, too," Oralie admitted.

"I don't know how to take it. Even after he was revealed to be a Neverseen member, part of me though I could get the old him back somehow. I never thought he'd…" 

There were so many ways to finish that sentence.

_ Burn down Eternalia. _

_ Murder Kenric. _

_ Die. _

Oralie didn't try any of them.

"You're allowed to feel conflicted," she assured him. "Everyone probably is.  _ I  _ am, a tiny bit—though most of me is…."

_ Sad. Angry. Devastated. Betrayed. _

Even though she was an Empath, she couldn't find the right words to phrase her inner hurricane of emotion.

  
  


_ Bargaining. _

_ If I had realized it sooner, Kenric might have been able to get out in time. _

_ If I had convinced more people to heal Prentice first, the entire fiasco wouldn't have happened. _

The words had been lurking in Oralie's mind for days, and she didn't know whether they were on her lips or whether Bronte just knew her too well, because he took one look at her and went "Are you getting introspective again?"

The two of them were in her castle, having just moved the boxes of Kenric's things that they'd wanted to keep—a photo album, books, a giant pile of hoodies that were too big for either of them but that both of them had refused to let go of. 

Oralie pulled the fabric of her chosen hoodie around her more tightly. It was one of her favorites: light purple and oversized on even Kenric, she was drowning in the soft fabric. It reminded her of him—it still  _ smelled _ like him—and she didn't know whether that helped or whether it just made her miss him even more.

"I just keep thinking that if I'd…"

"If you'd what?" Bronte interrupted. "Talked Fintan out of burning down Eternalia? Gotten killed by the Everblaze instead? It was Fintan who killed Kenric. It wasn't your fault."

"I know that it wasn't, but….it feels like there should have been something I could have done. Kenric didn't deserve to have this happen to him."

"He didn't," Bronte sighed. "That doesn't change that it did—and it  _ also  _ doesn't change that you didn't have anything to do with it." He scanned her face. "Have you been sleeping?"

"You're one to talk," Oralie noted. His dark circles were almost as bad as her own. "And...not really." Flashbacks from the fire had been invading her dreams, often with twists that left her unable to go back to sleep—the fire out of control, razing all of Eternalia, herself trapped in the tower as it melted, unable to get out in time, Sophie or Bronte dying in the flames as she was frozen in place….

"I think we both need better coping mechanisms than 'let's not sleep enough and not tell our best friend about it because we don't want to worry them even though we know they'd help if we asked.'"

"You just summed up the past two days in one sentence," Oralie laughed.

"All right, I'm staging an intervention. Do you want to have a sleepover tonight?"

"Yes."

"Wake me up if you have nightmares and need help, I don't care if it's three in the morning."

"Will you do the same?"

Bronte didn't respond.

"Let me help you, okay? You don't always have to be the older sibling. The protector."

"I always  _ was  _ the older sibling. For almost five thousand years. And now…." Bronte's voice trailed off. "I don't want to have to need help, but...I guess I do. I'll wake you up if I need you."

"If one of us does have a nightmare, we'll be sleep-deprived together, which is better than being sleep-deprived separately."

"I can't argue with that."

Hours later, the two of them had finally gone to bed. Curled up on the bottom bunk with her stuffed unicorn, Oralie could hear Bronte's breathing, and just knowing that he was there and he was alive and he was sticking with her despite her world falling to pieces made her breathing a little steadier, her thoughts a little less frenzied, the silence surrounding her room a little less suffocating.

Neither of them had nightmares that night.

  
  


_ Anger. _

"We are  _ not  _ using an untested piece of technology on Sophie!" Oralie exploded, resisting the urge to fling the stupid circlet in Alina's face.

"Oralie, I know it sounds unfair, but most children aren't ready to have an ability as powerful as Sophie's at her age. Most elvin children manifest between thirteen and fifteen—"

"Linh Song manifested at age ten," Terik interrupted. "Sophie's certainly an exception, but it's not as unusual as one might think."

"And her hydrokinesis was too powerful for her to handle—several bystanders were in critical condition that day in Atlantis, not to mention how close the city came to destruction," Clarette retorted. "Do we want to risk the same happening with Sophie? She almost got killed during Kenric's planting, not to mention that if the ogres declare war on us it'll take dozens, maybe hundreds, of lives." 

"I have to agree with Clarette," Emery sighed. "We just lost Kenric, the ogres are threatening war, and unrest is growing in the public. I know that Sophie's just a child, but if we go easy on her, nobody is going to take us seriously and King Dimitar could use this as a rallying point to turn others against us."

"A better way to stop the unrest would to be hunting down the Neverseen," Oralie pointed out.

"Of course that's necessary as well, but are we just going to let the Black Swan get away with their crimes?" Darek countered.

_ How shocked would all of you be if I said yes? _

_ How shocked would all of you be if I explained about Project Moonlark and proved that I'm not the perfect, rule-following Empath everyone seems to think I am? _

"It seems like a good plan, but we don't know if the circlet will have negative side affects on her," Ramira rationalized.

"We can have Mr. Dizznee tweak the circlet if it's too powerful," Velia replied. "It  _ should  _ only have control over her abilities—which clearly need to be kept in check."

"Powerful abilities are something  _ all twelve of us  _ have had adapt to," Bronte shot back. "She needs better control, not flat-out restriction."

"She had enough control over her telepathy to invade the ogre king's mind," Liora remarked. "It's not a matter of how good Sophie is at using her ability, it's a matter of her personal ability to exercise restraint—which seems to be quite lacking at the moment."

"This conversation has been going in circles ever since this morning," Emery sighed. "I suggest that we put it to a vote."

Nods came from around the table.

"All right. Those in favor of using the circlet?"

Nine Councillors raised their hands.

"Those opposed?"

Oralie's hand shot into the air, along with Bronte's and Terik's.

"We have a majority," Emery announced.

_ Kenric would have voted with me. _

_ He would have tried to stop this! _

_ This wouldn't have happened if he was still alive.  _

_ Even though he's not alive….maybe I can do something about this on my own. _

_ Acceptance. _

_ I've got this, Kenric. _

_ I've got your cache and I'm giving it to Sophie in an hour. I'll have to ditch a Council meeting to do it, but everyone's so upset about everything that's happened in the past two weeks (has it only been two weeks since you died and Bronte lost his brother and the ogres threatened war and the Council turned against Sophie? It feels like it's been longer) that I should be able to sneak away just fine. _

_ I'm so tempted to open your cache. Seven secrets, one of which might tell us about the gnomish plague. Seven of your stories, seven things I never knew about you and probably will never learn. Still, I know that it's far from a smart move, and right now Sophie needs the protection it grants her.  _

_ I'm wearing one of your old hoodies as I write this. They're still too big on me, of course. They still smell like you—it makes me miss you, but it also makes me glad that you were here.. That I've got so many good memories to look back on.  _

_ I'm not sure how I'm going to handle these next few weeks. Sophie's leaving the Lost Cities, my fellow Councillors are turning their grief into fear and rage against her, and new threats are appearing every way I turn. The world seems to be telling me that what I stand for is useless.. _

_ Luckily, I've never been one to listen to the world.  _

_ I'm definitely not listening to the world now.  _

_ Love, _

_ Oralie _

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The hoodies thing came from an ask I saw on SemperAeternumQue's Tumblr, @bronte-deserves-better. Bronte doing a planting for Fintan also came from a fic ey wrote.  
> Yes, I am aware that the five stages of grief are out of order. Yes, this was intentional—I tweaked the order to fit Oralie's canon reaction and character arc.


End file.
